Design and modelling of silicon microsystems for CAD

The silicon microsystems are nowadays one of the most rapidly developing branches of microelectronics. Particularly it refers to the sort of entities in which the incoming signal sensors are integrated with circuits responsible for data processing, analogue to digital converters, buffers, memories etc. The origin of sensed signals can be of various kinds. There are sensors of heat, concentration of ions in certain solution (ISFET sensors), acceleration, infrared radiation etc. This is connected with the very fast development of microelectronic technologies, which are supported with design kits. The designers that use a particular design kit has to obey the design rules - the set of rules appropriate for a specified technology. The most widely used standard in microelectronics design is CADENCE, which is a fully integrated design environment. This software offers the possibility of designing and modelling the most advanced units. In this paper the efficient path of designing silicon microsystems using the CADENCE CAD environment is presented. Moreover, it contains the behavioural models of microelectronic sensors, which are the basic part of microsystems. Models of these microstructures were described in the HDL-A language and tested in the multidomain ELDO-ANACAD simulation program.